NEWS
Dr. Joseph Sirven: Two Sides Of Hope
My patient’s mom drops a 500-page collection of internet pages that she had printed in front of me. It’s meticulously researched and indexed about her daughter’s rare epilepsy condition. “Dr. Sirven, this is light reading for your lunches this week and maybe dinners...
VNS Therapy Receives FDA Approval for Expanded MRI Labeling
VNS Therapy Receives FDA Approval for Expanded MRI Labeling “LivaNova” announced today that its latest VNS Therapy® systems received FDA approval for expanded MRI labeling, affirming VNS Therapy as the only epilepsy device approved by the FDA for MRI scans. This FDA...
A Chronic Childhood Illness Like Epilepsy Could Increase Risk of Adult Depression, Study Reports
Chronic childhood illnesses such as epilepsy could increase the risk that a person will develop clinical depression as an adult, according to new research. The study, “Research Review: Childhood chronic physical illness and adult emotional health – a systematic review...
Researchers Identify New Link Between Gene Expression and Brain Memory Processing
Researchers at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have discovered that more than 100 genes are linked to memory processing in the brain. The discovery could lead to the development of new therapies for memory-associated conditions such as epilepsy,...
Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood: A Physicians’ Guide for Diagnosis
Alternating hemiplegia of childhood (AHC) is a rare genetic disorder that involves both paroxysmal and chronic neurological symptoms, and its name comes from the recurrent attacks of hemiplegia. Attacks have been known to affect either side in the same patient at...
Epilepsy and natural treatments: Can they help?
Epilepsy is a disease that disrupts the electrical activity of the nervous system, causing seizures.More than 65 million people in the world have epilepsy. 1 in 26 Americans will develop the disease during their lives. Children are the group most frequently diagnosed...
Molecule may help maintain brain’s synaptic balance
Many neurological diseases are malfunctions of synapses, or the points of contact between neurons that allow senses and other information to pass from finger to brain. In the brain, there is a careful balance between the excitatory synapses that allow messages to...
New Selfie Danger? Camera Flash May Trigger Seizure-Like Response
Snapping a selfie may come with an unwanted side effect, at least for one teen. In a recent case report from Canada, doctors saw seizure-like activity in a teen's brainwaves just after the teen took a selfie. The doctors who treated the teen called the phenomenon...
Bad Weather May Increase Risk of Seizures in People with Epilepsy, Study Suggests
Low pressure and high humidity—conditions associated with thunderstorms—may put people with epilepsy at higher risk of a seizure. That's according to a study published online on May 28 in Epilepsia. Reports of a Weather-Seizure Connection Epilepsy has a variety of...
Noninvasive Deep Brain Stimulation Can Become Reality, Mouse Study Shows
Researchers have, for the first time, showed that it is possible to stimulate structures deep within the brain without the need for implanted electrodes — opening the possibility that epilepsy patients could receive deep brain stimulation in a noninvasive manner. The...
Why do epilepsy drugs don’t work for some women? Scientists find out
A variation in a gene is responsible for some women to suffer from frequent epileptic seizures despite taking anti-epileptic drugs Effective treatment is available for epilepsy, but doctors had found out that epilepsy drugs don’t work in some women. Now scientists...
Distinct wiring mode found in chandelier cells
Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience identify the wiring process of a unique type of inhibitory cells implicated in several diseases. A basic tenet of neural development is that young neurons make far more connections than they will...
Brain damage can make sideways faces more memorable, and give us ’emotion blindness’
People with damage to a crucial part of the brain fail to recognise facial emotions, but they unexpectedly find faces looking sideways more memorable researchers have found. The findings are more evidence that damage to the amygdala affects how facial recognition and...
Secret of Epilepsy Discovered in Jerusalem?
Unable to figure out what causes the neurological disorder, the scientists thought to ask: What causes normal people (or lab animals) not to have it? Epileptic seizures are caused by abnormal activity in our brain. We know that. Attacks can be unprovoked or can be the...
Clinically Differentiating Seizure from Syncope
Differentiating between syncope and seizures, a relatively easy task, is not quite so simple in the Emergency Departments. Transient loss of consciousness can occur from seizure or syncope, and the emergency clinician must distinguish between the two general...
Did ‘Pokemon’ Actually Give Kids Seizures In the 90s?
An investigation. Parents have always been a little concerned about their kids watching cartoons. They worry that their children watch cartoons too often, or the shows are violent. But what if a cartoon had the power to actually hurt your kid? That was the situation...
CBD and Your Brain
THC comes to mind when a lot of people talk about cannabis, but CBD is getting quite renowned due to its beneficial effects on the body. As scientific research moves step by step forward every day, it becomes clear that every medical cannabis strain has its own...
Studies of epilepsy patients uncover clues to how the brain remembers
In a pair of studies, scientists at the National Institutes of Health explored how the human brain stores and retrieves memories. One study suggests that the brain etches each memory into unique firing patterns of individual neurons. Meanwhile, the second study The...
Gene find could lead to treatment for epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease
A study conducted in the US has hit upon a new strategy to identify genes that underlie specific brain processes, and may eventually help scientists develop treatments for patients with memory impairments. More than 100 genes linked to memory have been identified,...
What Triggers A Seizure In Photosensitive Epilepsy? Science Discovers Why Still Photos Can Cause An Episode
Most people are aware that flashing and strobe lights can trigger a seizure in some individuals with epilepsy, but few realize that certain still images can have the same effect. Doctors have remained puzzled as to why certain motionless photos can trigger seizures,...
